Prison
by SnowEyes
Summary: He should have left it be, when he could have. But she was there and she was hungry and she'd loved him,


**prison  
****  
**_he should have left it be, when he could have.   
but she was there and she was hungry and she'd loved him,   
and that was something that he could not refuse._

__

His fingers brushed fair wisps of hair behind his ear, and he stood his ground carefully as he stared down at the blood red mud of the battleground that he remembered as being pads of stone corridors and the cries of strangled death, and waited.

It was the early afternoon, and she stood there with her hands curled around her thighs, long fingernails tapping absent-mindedly at her hips, lips pursed and baited. Her feet were bare; she wore a light cloak and skirt, seams ripping at ends where she'd torn at them with the anxious biting that came from being nervous, as she chewed any cloth she could get her hands on at the time. Her shoulders tensed, and her stare moved upward from the ground to her fingertips, which were bitten to the quick, dried blood just lingering on the tip of her left ring finger.

He was standing there, at the end of the dungeon halls of a castle that had been broken in the battles of time that he no longer bothered to think about in character. But he was the boy of seventeen again that he had been, and he stood there and paid no attention to the goosebumps that rose on his arms or the wind that blew at his back. The boy of seventeen stood there in the early afternoon of July thirty-first, and stared back at the pale thing that glared at him, hands on hips.

You, it said, and blinked twice, wonder paling off the translucent skin in waves._ You came back._

It wasn't a question, and there wasn't an answer. He sat down, quickly, feeling his legs weaken without his consent, and stretched his fingers wide over the cool cobblestones mixed with earth and broken glass, gazing. He could never tire of gazing. It felt right, somehow, to let your gaze linger on something, and to keep it there, as if giving a gift. That's right, it was like giving a gift: a tired gift, a gift that the owner had decided to give anyone out of contempt.

"Yes," he said, teeth curling over the edge of lips. "I came back."

The ghost nodded, once, hair flowing in some once-begotten breeze, that he was sure he could feel if he tried, but had no energy left to try. He was tired. They spoke of it everyday. It was easy to speak of; the words could leave your mouth without pain or torture or subtle twisting, to say, I am tired, and watch the faces in front of you nod wearily, words mumbling out of parched lips. He hated that. He hated everything.

Silver hands brushed themselves over his robes and reached towards his cheeks, and stopped when she let out a breath, of terror, or maybe it was wonder but it didn't matter anymore. It was the burning pain of biting ice that whispered over his hands and cheeks and neck and lips. They stopped at her lips, the hands, and shook, gently, see-through finger tips bitten to the quick darting softly to silver robes.

I didn't think you would come. It was halted, full of silence, and he nodded, once, and watched eyes sweep over, and lips purse, and he wished she could feel again. Because he should feel, he ought to be able to. He had tried to, once. _You came back._ The hands tightened their grip on lucid air, and he blanched. _I want to know why._

"I can't tell you," he whispered, and jerked as ice flitted gently through his forehead, and snapped back again, gaze transferring to shaking fingertips. "They thought that it was done, and I won't tell you more."

...I have no strength left for you. Anger dripped quietly into every pore, as pain ripped through him like a wailing nightmare. _Do you wish to be dead...?_ He couldn't see through the black and silver that covered her eyelids like haze over a meadow. _I could give you that... _It reached out, with dark blotches of color staining sides of fingers, and she was in the hallway again between classes and he reached out and touched her cheek with silver eyes sending searing pain through temples and rushes of red and silver and her lips were cold like ice.

He showed her the ring on his hand; she touched her own with whisper; and he was left wanting more, like when she'd given him her heart and her consent in the early afternoon on the day of the end of the war.


End file.
